There was a great article in the Economist this week about the rise and rise of the PR industry. According to the magazine, “PR is an increasingly vital marketing tool – especially as traditional forms of advertising struggle to catch consumers’ attention.”
I particularly like the graph showing PR spending in the US – growing from about $2bn in 1999 to over $5bn in 2009 – which has the title: “The wages of spin.”
A useful quote (although stating the bleeding obvious) comes from Richard Edelman, CEO of the eponymous Edelman PR firm: “the most credible form of communication now comes from ‘a person like yourself’.”
I’m interested in a comment by by Pam Talbot, Edelman’s chief in America, “Companies can try to serve up a tight, straight message through the media by issuing a one-way press release but that’s as flawed right now as a 15 or 30-second TV ad.” Although my experience of Edelman is of a series of tight, straight, one-way press releases.
I wonder what the two-way equivalents might be. Perhaps a PR-sponsored product blog? Case studies are useful ways of capturing some kind of two-way relationship between a company and its customers. Evangelism of the Guy Kawasaki form is another kind of PR.
Luckily the article has not completely fallen for the PR industry’s spin of itself. Two telling quotes: that the industry is suffering from “consultant envy,” and “some jounralists regard PR people as a nuisance, or worse.”
For me, I guess I’m a poacher and a gamekeeper. As a journalist, am in stuck in a love-hate relationship with PR companies. I need them for some stories and from time to time, they find me good case studies and facilitate interviews with people I need to talk to. Other times they lose me money and waste my time (you know who you are, etc.). With my B2B corporate writer hat on (see www.articulatemarketing.com), I am sort of in the PR industry, at least in its broadest definition. Consequently, the most important thing for me is to apply what I know as a journalist to what I do as a corporate write to avoid making the mistakes I see other companies make.
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